1738

Ministers should
be Sons of Thunder: Men had need have Storms in their hearts,
before they will betake
themselves to Christ for Refuge.

—Solomon Stoddard, The
Defects of Preachers Reproved (1723)

Pastor Jonathan Edwards
and his sixteen-year-old nephew arrived at the Connecticut River ferry
before noon. The ferry captain asked if they would join him at his
midday repast. He had not eaten at all that morning—a spat with the
good lady of his house—so he was too hungry to wait on lunch. Edwards nodded
yes, although he was lost in thought. His nephew Medad, inflamed
by the passion for his eighteen-year-old cousin in Hadley, looked on the
scene with tender excitement. Cascades of purple, white, and pink
flowers fluttered in the breeze over the river bank, and petals floated
downstream. Medad watched the ferryman chew his lunch without teeth.
Here was one of the great majority of the town who could not take the covenant
because they did not own land. These men waited outside the church
after the sermons for notes written down during the service. Edwards
was oblivious of this fellow, in no way discomfited by his exclusion from
the church. The boy spoke a few sympathetic words to the ferryman,
but he forgot what he’d said the instant the words left his lips.
The hot sun and sweet air and drone of bees made them all sleepy.
On the other side of the river, Medad could see his cousin and her father
waiting. Her father had the reins strapped tightly across the horse’s
breast—a cruel way of leaving the animal at rest; the tension of the man
multiplies in the horse. Medad forgave himself this moment of anger—and
loved his cousin with this wash of river between them as he would never
be able to do in her vicinity.

• • •

She breathed up at him.
Her breath smelled of God. They did not deceive their elders out
of fear of discovery or because the Devil lived in their choice of a sensual
nature and their mutual physical affection. They deceived casually,
because it pleased them to, because they did no one harm, and because they
enjoyed accumulating venial sin. Neither good Reverend suspected
his ward of evil. The two intimidating figures fell into conversation
and rode ahead on horseback. The youths stayed behind to check the
bridles of the draft horse and to load the shipment of books from New Haven
Edwards was delivering to his brother. In plain sight of the ferryman,
with her back turned to him, Molly revealed one white breast to her astonished
younger cousin. Quickly as she undid, she did up the blouse and jumped
onto the buckboard unassisted. This the ferryman saw, with delight
and scorn mixed equally, and this was the sort of thing he might report
to her father, so she said, “A spider on the ground did throw me into fright.”
He nodded, knowing otherwise to be truth, but now also having to admit
to himself he had nothing solid to report, for if he did it would have
to include the subjective and salacious finding that Molly jumped onto
the buckboard sensually, as if in a dance, as if possessed briefly by the
Devil’s own sense of play.

They drove off under no
clouds, although ahead on the path, far ahead, they could see a storm
gathering to obscure their elders’ sunlight. The road turned sharply
at Deacon Hawley’s field, and the innocents lost sight of their moral guidance.
Medad urged the horse to take a left turn back toward the river, which
plied to their favor. He found the spot, far from anyone’s home because
so close to the river’s annual flooding. They alighted and slid down
the mud trail to the river. To their surprise, they undressed completely,
unafraid and truly as if they knew what they were doing. But they
knew not what works they had in store. They knew only the hushed
mechanism of action, operating as if by a spring unwinding. They
faced one another, surprised by the clumsiness of their bodies. She
took him in her hand and turned herself around and lay hold of a tree trunk
for support with her free hand. She guided him. It was not
easy, contrary to what they expected of sin, but the pain, the sweat, the
unaccustomed shapes conjured against the shadows in their minds, the very
struggle, made this action tangibly pleasing. Lilacs nearby colored
the surrounding smell.

Inside a small inlet of
the river, they found a raft made of fallen logs with green willow branches
as lashing. They climbed onto it, dimly aware their sin was great,
but in the grip of a force that made their movements, at least, seem sensible
and clean-spirited. The boys who made the raft would not disfavor
its being employed for a half hour. They intended only to drift in place
in the tiny, protected bay, so they hung their clothes neatly on the bushes
by the water. The raft did at first turn gently in soporific circles
so at length they fell asleep in each other’s arms. But rivers are
mischievous spirits and, with a start, they woke to find themselves midstream,
down river, past the ferry landing. They judged their chances of
swimming ashore poor at this stage of the river, where it moves with cunning
and authority. They did not yield to despair, however, and came to
see, from their lowly berth, the beauty of this river valley. The
Connecticut River here comes to a great gap in the mountains, which were
just this week a riot of new greens. The raft moved quickly for a
time, then it came to a stretch of languid swirls, and water began to penetrate
the careless vessel. This might have alarmed less optimistic souls,
but the two cousins luxuriated in the sensation of cold river water and
hot sun above. Mortal danger also awakens carnal desire, so they
moved together again and held each other as one scene gradually melted
into the next. The notch in the Mount Holyoke Range came closer.
The stack of white clouds in the sky rested along this ridge, too, a pattern
the lovers saw as prophetic not of danger but of passage from one state
of bliss to another. The opposite bank drew very near at this point.
The raft drifted within easy reach of several roots and branches.
The underbrush rustled, and a pair of shiny foreheads flashed. Two
Indians lay on their stomachs, long sticks in their hands, confabulating
about who knew what aspect of the inner workings of Nature. The Indians
stood up, brown leaves painted on their flesh. The young couple waved.
The Indians stared unblinking at the white-skinned devils who were slowly
sinking in each other’s arms, unconcerned by the river that gathered them
in its embrace. Even underwater, sunlight glinted off their open
eyes. The lovers sat upright on the sandy bottom, breathing regularly
as if they would survive the airless realm they had discovered. The
Indians backed away toward their canoe, more certain than ever that this
once fertile meadow was hopelessly human.

• • •

The shadow of a great
oak gathered a small crowd outside the meeting house on Main Street.
The men could hear a thundering sermon inside, but not the words themselves.
Now the holy voice stilled, and all they heard was the creaking of the
benches, coughs, one embarrassed sneeze cut short. Oftentimes these
men, the unelect, would try to listen to the sermon, but they would end
quietly chatting among themselves, aware that they should keep peaceful
and avoid spontaneous outburst. But this day was unusual. At
the center of the excitement was the ferry master. He was not ordinarily
paid much respect. He was known to drink spirits and had once been
questioned for embracing his wife on the doorstep. He also had a
tendency to tell stories with too much zeal and joy, despite warnings to
keep to the point and not over-elaborate. Such a reputation usually
sequestered him. This Sunday he blushed at the attention all eyes
paid him, and, for once, was shy of telling the story again of this star-crossed
couple, children of the River Gods, who had not been seen since the ferryman
bid them well on the Hadley side of the river, four days past.

The ferryman, Tom Matthews,
inhaled the smell of leather and sweat, and exhaled all evil thoughts.
He said simply, “They evinced a holy pleasure at the soft air. The
boy read scriptures as they left. The girl stumbled once and let
out a cry but not a licentious sound, only a fearful noise, perhaps at
a spider on her breath. The buckboard stood near the banks of Hadley
Meadows, no trace of them hereabouts.” These lies frightened Tom.
He had bundled the clothes he found and tied a rock to them and thrown
the packet far into the river current. He knew what to make of the
arrangement—or disarrangement—of the clothes. This surprised him
by not pleasing him in any way. She was a beautiful girl and the
boy a much stronger force of nature than Tom had ever been. But when
the two reverends returned, stern in their anxiety, he did not tell them
of his discovery. Was this wrong? Was he already under the
sway of evil, somehow colluding with the sin he had just missed witnessing?

The next night, certain
townspeople convinced Tom to meet them by the Mill River, at the first
ford. One brought a bottle of cider he had no difficulty encouraging
Tom to believe was medicinal. It did indeed taste like health and
goodness. Many were not convinced of his earlier story. Shaking,
Tom recanted. After much prodding, he told his second tale.

“I had often before this
said that if the Indians should come, I would choose rather to be killed
by them than taken alive, but when it came to the trial my mind changed.
Their glittering weapons so daunted my spirit that I chose to go along
with those (I may say) ravenous beasts, than that moment to end my days.
They were some twenty in number, all naked and surrounding the girl often
in a frenzy if you’ll excuse my describing it so. The boy they killed
quickly, a wooden bat to the temple of his head, for crying out too often.
In the heavy brush north of Hatfield, I eluded my shadow. My surprise
that they did not return for me was lessened by the great spider-webbed
forest I fell into, dozens of the creatures crisscrossing the branches,
most the size of my closed fist. I paid very careful attention to
these beings because, though I feared them greatly, they seemed to protect
me from the wrath of these silent, stealthy men. It is certain that
these webs, when they first proceed from the spider, are so rare a substance,
that they are lighter than air, because they will ascend in it, as they
will immediately in a calm air, and never descend except driven by a wind;
wherefore ‘tis certain. And ‘tis as certain, that what swims and
ascends in water is lighter than water. So that if we should suppose
any such time, wherein the air is perfectly calm, this web is so easily
drawn out of a spider’s tail, that if the end of it be once out, barely
the levity of it is sufficient to draw it out to any length. What
came of the girl? I dread to say they had loosened off all her garments
and she seemed to find joy in the naked gait, running as quickly and quietly
as these wild animals, not as if she were a prisoner. They must have
cast a spell on her.”

The townsmen were more
satisfied with this story, even if the ferryman was not. He drank
quickly, both of the cider and later of whisky. No one was surprised
that he died three weeks later after an outbreak of small pox. The
bodies of the two cousins were never found. The Indian villages to
the north and west were eventually razed, but not because of these purported
abductions.